Hezbollah: Israeli attack kills senior commander

(MENAFN-Jordan Times) BEIRUT, Lebanon – Hezbollah said an Israeli airstrike killed a senior commander in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, the second such loss for the Iran-backed movement in recent weeks.

Since its Palestinian ally Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel on October 7, sparking the war in the Gaza Strip, Hezbollah has been subjected to almost daily cross-border shelling by the Israeli army. But an increase in war rhetoric on both sides in recent weeks has raised fears of a full-scale war.

“A Hezbollah commander in charge of one of the three sectors in southern Lebanon was killed in an Israeli attack on a car in Tyre,” a source told AFP, requesting anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

Hezbollah said “Commander Mohammed Naameh Nasser,” also known as “Hajj Abu Naameh,” was killed and also announced the death of a second fighter.

Another source close to the group, who also wished to remain anonymous, confirmed that Nasser was killed in the attack in Tyre, making him the third high-ranking Hezbollah commander to be killed in the nearly nine months of hostilities.

The Lebanese state news agency NNA said that “an enemy drone attacked a car” in Tyre, a coastal city about 20 kilometers from the border.

The first source said Nasser held the same rank as Taleb Abdallah, a commander killed in an Israeli strike last month and described by a Lebanese military source at the time as the “most important” Hezbollah commander killed to date.

This attack prompted Hezbollah to intensify its attacks on Israeli targets and to fire a barrage of rockets across the border in the following days.

In January, a security source said an Israeli strike killed Wissam Hassan Tawil, another senior commander in the group.

“Prevent a fire”

Hezbollah announced a series of attacks on Israeli troops and positions near the border for Wednesday, while the NNA reported Israeli attacks in other parts of southern Lebanon.

The commander’s death followed a relative easing of cross-border exchanges last week after threats increased on both sides.

Fears that the violence, which had so far been largely confined to the border region, could escalate into open war triggered a flood of diplomatic efforts to defuse the situation.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prevent a “conflagration” between Israel and Hezbollah.

US envoy Amos Hochstein, who has visited Lebanon repeatedly in recent months, was due to arrive in Paris on Wednesday, where he was due to meet with Macron’s Lebanon envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Iran warned on Saturday that Israel would face “all fronts of resistance” if it attacked Lebanon.

Last week, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said his country did not want war in Lebanon, but could push it back into the “Stone Age” if diplomacy failed.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah warned in June that “no place” in Israel would be spared in the event of a full-scale war and threatened neighboring Cyprus if it opened its airports to Israel.

According to an AFP count, at least 495 people were killed in the cross-border violence in Lebanon, most of them fighters, but also 95 civilians.

According to Israeli authorities, at least 15 soldiers and 11 civilians were killed.

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